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Audiences naturally respond to stories that are emotionally charged, and YA benefits from this by focusing on adolescence-a time when we’re still figuring out how to process the intricacies of our relationships.
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She can try to take the right side in a fight between a short-sighted best friend and a pragmatic parent, knowing that she both wins and loses through either choice she can go to a drive-in movie with a boy who has a crush on her, understanding that doing so is polite, but that she’s encouraging flirting she’s not interested in receiving.Įach of these games are successful because there’s a momentum to the teen drama that comes from how it focuses on the most dynamic social interactions. A teenager devoted to the well-being of her friends, Max finds herself trying to do the right thing in situations where there’s rarely a way to please everyone. Most important is its developer’s dedication to expressing, through game protagonist Max, the difficulty of trying to be a good person while working through adolescent self-identification.
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And, like Degrassi, it’s also full of goofy, faux-hip dialogue that is performed and directed with such straightforward passion that it more often enhances than detracts. In true Degrassi style, Life Is Strange is filled with awful step-parents, drug dealers, shitty cliques and the odd loaded gun. Like Oxenfree, it uses a kind of magical realist take on teen drama-its main character’s ability to manipulate time-to discuss nostalgia and regret. It’s powerful and sincere and a beautifully executed example of how to use the medium to portray the confusion and pain of a teenager in the process of forging her own identity.ĭontnod Entertainment’s Life Is Strange, aside from an unfortunate diversion into true crime silliness, is a similarly effective model for YA videogames. The narrative’s core is a heartfelt look at a young woman’s struggles with homophobia and familial acceptance. Largely focusing on Kaitlin’s teenage sister Sam, Gone Home is a classic coming of age story, presented through household objects and notes. Exploring the family home she’s just returned to after a long trip abroad, Gone Home’s player character Kaitlin pieces together family events that took place in her absence.
Though there are plenty of games starring teenagers, the 2013 release of The Fullbright Company’s excellent Gone Home is the real watershed moment for the genre’s use in games. It’s also the latest example of videogames’ exploration of YA. Oxenfree, like all good YA fiction, knows that anything else that happens during its story-the excitement of scares and metaphysical plot twists-is only an extension of how its young characters are dealing with their world. The YA genre speaks to its demographic by presenting its subject matter directly, preferring raw emotion to thoughtful implication. When we’re teenagers, our problems are more confusing and difficult to process than they are when we’re adults. It lacks nuance, sure, but that’s appropriate in YA fiction. All the same, Degrassi, in its outsized style, captures the truth of being a teenager in a pretty remarkable way. You’re only supposed to like Degrassi ironically because it’s incredibly, unapologetically melodramatic and features actors who, being teenage unknowns, usually haven’t yet internalized the value of underselling a performance.
The show was dated, but it was still easy to get absorbed in the travails of Toronto kids with fantastic haircuts and acid-washed jeans as they navigated issues like sex, drug addiction, abuse and bullying. I watched it religiously in high school, catching re-runs of the Junior High and High seasons long after they’d originally aired during the late ‘80s/early ’90s. It is, in its wonderfully earnest way, one of the best examples of young adult (or YA) fiction out there.
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While it isn’t my favorite TV show (boringly, that’d be an HBO stalwart like The Wire, The Sopranos or Deadwood), the venerable Canadian high school drama hits certain notes that other, more serious-minded shows don’t.
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